Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Sudden painful, pale, cold leg - Emergency Department

HardYear 5 · Curtin style · 15 min + 2 min reading · 5 tasks

2 min reading · 15 min station · reminders at 2 min

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are an intern working in the Emergency Department of a metropolitan hospital in Perth that has a vascular surgery service. It is 10 am.

Thao Nguyen, 72, has been brought in by her husband with severe pain in her right leg that started suddenly this morning. She is on a trolley with the leg uncovered.

Your tasks are to:

  1. Take a focused history.
  2. Perform a focused examination.
  3. Request any relevant investigations and interpret the results provided.
  4. Summarise your findings to the examiner with your most likely diagnosis and differential diagnoses.
  5. Outline your immediate management plan to the examiner.
  • A handheld Doppler is on the table.
  • Please verbalise your examination to the examiner; findings will be provided on request.

This is a 15-minute station, with 2 minutes of reading time.

Ask the examiner

Say what you would examine or request, the way you would in the station. Nothing is named until you ask for it.

Whatever the examiner recognises is revealed below. Or pick a numbered item to reveal it blind.

Investigations

Ask for a category the way you would in the station: “Can I have the obs and a set of bloods?”

Examination

Say what you would examine and how; the examiner reports what you would find.

After treatment

Once you have acted, ask how the patient has responded.